Man’s body recovered in river near Bronkhorstspruit
“Little did we know that the weekend would turn out in a nightmare."
The body of a 33-year-old man, believed to be Nantes de Lange of eMalalheni, was found in a river near Bronkhorstspruit on Sunday morning.
This after he and his friends jumped off a 30m cliff into the river the evening before.
De Lange was with his friends at the Wilge River on Saturday afternoon when the accident happened.
According to a Facebook post by De Lange’s sister, Nanette Opperman, her brother and his friends were jumping off a cliff into the river when his friends came up from under the water but he did not.
She said he hit the water and did not resurface like the others.
Family and friends looked for him the evening and was only found by divers on Sunday after 10:00.
According to the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) emergency operations centre, they were alerted that he had disappeared around 19:00 on the Saturday.
“The NSRI Witbank duty crew was joined by a police K9 unit, off-road rescue unit and the Tshwane police unit to assist them in a recovery operation from first light on Sunday morning.
“A search area was identified by K9 officers and during a scuba-dive search operation, police divers recovered [De Lange’s] body under water,” the statement read.
One of De Lange’s friends, Wihan Adlem, who was at the scene, said it was “a freak accident that could not be explained”.
“We were a group of friends that went for a getaway weekend,” Adlem said.
“Little did we know that the weekend would turn out in a nightmare. Nantes’ death still feels so unreal.”
De Lange was an avid motorcyclist.
The club he belonged to, Crusaders MC South Africa National, said on their Facebook page that “our thoughts will be with his family, friends, and our Outlaws charter in this difficult time”.
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